AI reshapes service experience; mobile banking competitive landscape diversifies

Byline: Li Bing, Xiong Yue

As listed banks continue to disclose their 2025 annual reports, mobile banking—acting as a core carrier for retail digital transformation—has seen its operating data, service innovation, and strategic layout become an important window for observing banks’ digital and even intelligent transformation.

Based on the performance data already disclosed, mobile banking has completely shed its former positioning as a “supporting transaction channel,” rising to become a “super entry point” through which banks deliver digital finance and everyday life services. Overall, mobile banking development and operations show a growth trend of “leading by the top players, competition in layers, technology enablement, and deep ecosystem cultivation.”

Layered Competition Emerges

In terms of tier distribution, the industry’s “the strong get stronger” characteristic is prominent. State-owned big banks, leveraging their massive customer bases and technology investments, occupy a leading position in the first tier of mobile banking business. By the end of 2025, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China’s personal mobile banking customers reached 630 million accounts, with mobile-monthly active users exceeding 290 million; both remained number one in the industry. China Construction Bank’s personal mobile banking asset customers were 441 million accounts, up 3.95% year over year. Bank of China’s signed customers and monthly active customers for personal mobile banking were 313 million accounts and 105 million accounts, respectively—making it the bank’s transaction channel with the most active customers. Agricultural Bank of China’s personal mobile banking monthly active users exceeded 276 million; among them, monthly active users of county-level mobile banking were 130 million accounts. With its advantages in deep cultivation of the county market, it consolidated its leading position. The monthly active customers of personal mobile banking at Bank of Communications reached 57.41 million accounts.

Some joint-stock banks’ mobile banking customer numbers also show a growth momentum. By the end of 2025, Ping An Pocket Bank App had 182 million registered users, up 4.7% from the end of 2024. Shanghai Pudong Development Bank’s personal mobile banking signed customers surpassed 93 million, with monthly active customers surpassing 34 million accounts, up 6.11% year over year. At Industrial Bank, the number of effective customers on its mobile banking reached 70.2167 million, up 11.83% year over year.

City commercial banks and rural commercial banks and other regional banks form the “third tier,” achieving differentiated development by relying on local ecosystems. For example, by the end of 2025, Qingdao Bank’s stock users of personal mobile banking were 5.5354 million accounts, up 227k from the end of 2024. Zhengzhou Bank’s personal mobile banking cumulative signed customers were 4.2718 million accounts.

Lou Feipeng, a researcher at China Postal Savings Bank, told Securities Daily reporters that, overall, state-owned big banks have a large user base for mobile banking but slower growth rates, and they place greater emphasis on ecosystem building and scenario integration. Joint-stock banks focus on differentiated competition and improve user activity through refined operations. City commercial banks and rural commercial banks rely on regional advantages and deeply develop local life services, treating mobile banking as the primary customer-acquisition channel.

AI Enables Upgraded Experience

Continuously iterating the functions of mobile banking, exploring various application scenarios, and constantly improving service quality have become standardized measures for listed banks to build and refine the core service carrier of mobile banking. Another notable change is that AI technology is becoming a core driving force, pushing services from being “operable” to “conversational.” At the same time, the service boundaries of mobile banking are being thoroughly dismantled between financial and non-financial areas, evolving into a “super app” bundling local life services, further opening new business growth points for banks.

For example, in 2025, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China promoted the “ICBC XiaoZhi” intelligent interaction feature in its mobile banking, covering high-frequency scenarios such as transfers and wealth management. China Postal Savings Bank’s mobile banking broke through the key technology for “all-voice business handling,” exploring a new interaction experience of “services that find people.” Bank of Communications’ personal mobile banking upgraded to version 10.0 and launched the “AI Little Deer Assistant” feature, providing intelligent services loaded into high-frequency scenarios as customers use them. It also launched a “Culture and Travel Zone,” offering an intelligent travel-planning tool to provide convenient, efficient companion-style services for customers’ trips.

For joint-stock banks, in 2025, Ping An Bank released version 8.0 of the Ping An Pocket Bank App. It integrated high-frequency use scenarios such as life services and event benefits, enhancing account comprehensive service capabilities and optimizing the user experience. It also leveraged generative artificial intelligence (AIGC) to assist in creating service content, improving customer experience through personalized interactions, among other efforts.

“The AI capability applications of leading mobile banking products are moving from technical exploration toward scenario implementation, with intelligent search, intelligent assistants, and intelligent recommendations as the main application directions. Meanwhile, intelligent-agent services with action capability replacing traditional Q&A-style AI has become a shared industry view.” Fang Ruixin, an expert in financial industry consulting at Analysys Qianfan, said in an interview with Securities Daily reporters.

Fang Ruixin further said that AI presents a significant enabling role for both personal mobile banking and enterprise mobile banking, but with different emphases. Personal mobile banking focuses on understanding user intent and handling it quickly. Therefore, future iteration priorities will include naturalized interaction, embedded services, AI guidance, and customer service, among others. Enterprise mobile banking also needs to go deeper into enterprise business logic to address business-operation pain points. Therefore, future iteration priorities lie in optimizing business processes, bringing in ecosystems for enablement, and improving product availability, while the impact on interaction experience is relatively smaller.

“In the current landscape, each bank’s personal mobile banking places more emphasis on the layout of consumer finance and life scenarios, and the development trend shows platform-like and ecosystem-like characteristics. The focus is on improving user experience and engagement, and integrating diversified functions such as payments, wealth management, credit, and life services.” Lou Feipeng believes that when banks use AI to enhance the performance of mobile banking, they should focus on three areas in particular: first, leveraging large-model technology to further improve service efficiency and the level of personalized services; second, optimizing frictionless experiences by simplifying user operation workflows with technologies such as biometric recognition; and third, strengthening intelligent scenario recommendations by providing precise services based on users’ behavioral data.

(Editor: Qian Xiaorui)

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